


Harbinger

by LadyofShalott



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:03:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyofShalott/pseuds/LadyofShalott
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trelawney isn't the only psychic at Hogwarts, and in some cases, precognition is a curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harbinger

**Author's Note:**

> This was written quite a while ago in response to a comment fic prompt whose exact wording I no longer remember. I do not own these characters, no harm is intended, and no profit is made. I'm just a fan with a bit of a Snape obsession.

The knowing was sometimes worse than the doing. He never told Albus exactly how he knew that Voldemort would go to Godric's Hollow. Nor did he tell him that he already knew what the outcome would be. He cursed the fact that everything they did to prevent it was futile, because in the end, Potter would die, Lily would die, and her orphan child would be marked for life by a megalomaniacal madman without a shred of conscience.

He never told anyone that the reason he seemed to loathe Harry Potter was that every time the child got near him, the vision came back to him. He must have watched Lily die ten thousand times during Harry's tenure at Hogwarts. He was honestly surprised that he managed to bear it for as long as he did, especially since he felt a strange sort of obligation to look out for the boy. 

He could tell you in great, gory detail how and when any member of the Hogwarts faculty, staff, or student body was going to die. McGonagall would go peacefully in her sleep after living to a ripe old age. Longbottom would perish some thirty years hence on an expedition with Miss Lovegood searching for yeti in Nepal. He would meet his end trying to save her when they actually found the yeti. Distraught, she would take her own life two years later, unable to function without him. The elder Malfoy would meet his end in a tragic fall from the top floor of Malfoy Manor. It would be ruled an accident. The authorities would be incorrect in that assumption. The fall would actually be a jump, and Lucius would die with a smile on his lips. The younger Malfoy would be poisoned by a servant, falling victim to a series of violent seizures before bleeding to near exsanguination from every orifice of his body. Mr. Finnegan... well, one didn't need to be psychic to know he'd blow himself to bits by mistake. Albus was perhaps the harshest revelation. He knew when, where, and by whose hand Albus would die -- and because Albus told him that he must do what it took to keep Potter alive, he did nothing to alter the future he had seen. 

He had seen his own end as well. A weaker man would have run away from it, the instinct for self-preservation overriding any thought of the greater good. He was not a weak man. Severus walked into the boathouse with head held high, the knowledge that he had come to the last minutes of his life held closely in his heart. It played out as he knew it would... Voldemort, the snake, Potter. Blackness clouded his vision, and as his body gave out, he greeted Death as an old friend and went with him gladly. Finally, there was blessed darkness.


End file.
